It was as if her soul had leapt, naked and raging, from out of her mouth when she said that. Ellen stirred among the cushions, feeling unformulated shame. She wondered how Richard could endure hearing that hoarse vehemence from the lips of one whom he must wish to be gentle and unpassionate. But he was gazing at his mother trancedly and with slight movements of his hands and feet, as if she were dancing and he desired to join her in her spinning rhythm; and she, mad, changeable woman, shivered and pressed her fingers against her mouth to silence herself, and looked down on her skirt, drawling lazily: "Well, here I am, standing about in my outdoor clothes. If there's anything I hate, it's wearing outdoor clothes in the house. However, it'll save me changing, and I've none too much time if I'm going to be punctual for Roger's meeting."
She moved towards the door. He followed softly, as her shadow, and held it open.
When he made to follow her out of the room she turned sharply. "You needn't come."
"I promised Roger," he said falsely.
"What nonsense!" she blazed. "I'll tell him you had to stay here with Ellen."
She banged the door on him. He stood staring at its panels, which were rosy with firelight, and Ellen closed her eyes for weariness. After some seconds she heard his tread and felt him bend over her. "Ellen," he mumbled, "I must go with mother. That fool will be too awful on the platform. I must see her through."
From the dark fey shape he made against the firelight she knew that he was not thinking of her, that the life she had given him by her love no longer ran in his veins. She scratched one of her wrists. If she could have let the life he had given flow out of her veins she would have done it. "Ay, do," she said. "I like you to be good to your mother. You never know how long you may have her with you," she added piously and not without cheerfulness.
He left her with a kiss that was dry and spurious like a paper flower. She sank back into the chair and closed her eyes again, and listened for the closing of the front door which would leave her free to weep or rage or dance or do whatever would relieve the pressure of the moment on her brain. She filled in the throbbing tune by thinking of the visitors. It gave her a curious thrill, such as she might have felt if she had gratified her ambition to carry a heavy-plumed fan like Sarah Bernhardt's, to reflect that she had sat in the same room with a bad woman. A desire for unspecified adult things ran through her veins, as if she had just heard the strong initial blare of a band. Then she checked all thoughts, for from the hall she heard the sound of argument.
The door was flung open by Marion. She moved towards the hearth with a burly speed which marked this moment a crisis in the house of languid, inhibited movements, and cast herself down on a low stool by the fender. Richard followed and stood over her, the firelight driving over his face like the glow of excited blood, the shadows lying in his eye-sockets like blindness. She cried up at him: "No, I will not go if you come too. How can I go and sit listening to him, with you beside me hating him!" He swayed slowly, but did not answer. She stripped herself of coat and furs and thrust them on him. "There. Take them up to my room. I'm not going. I'll tell some lie. Better than you hating him like this. And while you're up you'll find some papers on my desk about the mortgage on Whitewebbs. Attend to these. And don't come back just now. You drive me mad when you hate Roger so."
When he had softly shut the door she put her hand to her head and said: "Oh, Ellen, what has happened to me? I have lost all my strength."